So I have been having a problm many of you may also face. I am a film producer and cinematographer, and I would love to have my projects/showreel on my phone to show potential clients when I'm out and about.

I have Final Cut Pro and have access to pretty much any encoding possible. HOWEVER, when I load my compressed videos onto the device, only the audio plays.

Now I don't want to hear "load the roxio software" because I have a mac and it doesn't work for me, as well as the fact that I don't want to lose any quality by compressing twice. One export form Final Cut should be enough, so I just need to know what settings this stupid device is looking for in my exports from Final Cut Pro. I have tried quicktime .mov as well as Mpeg-4, both using the H.264 codec. Usually I do 480x270, but have also tried the 480x360 native to the Bold's screen size.

There is not yet a definitive answer for you - I've been asking RIM tech insiders for months - but I can give you some starting points.

You'll want to do an MPEG 4 encoding to fit the 480x320 screen, of course, but the wrapper & bitrate info is going to take trial and error. You may have better luck with MPEG2 or DIVX and compromised screen size until they get better with publishing a spec.

But here's one route that may help.

Open the Media Player, then the menu and select Explore, then the menu again, then Show Hidden, then System, then Samples, then Videos, highlightBlackBerry.mp4.rem.

I don't know - but others might - of any way of snagging a "Forward Locked" file for analysis by other programs, but figuring out how they encoded that baby will tell you how to make your own work play gloriously on a Bold.

I have downloaded a free program called Avidemux 2.4 to convert my video files for BB Bold. Using MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid4) for video with resizing option set to 480 x 320, and MP3 (LAME) for voice with 128 Kbps and exporting it as an AVI file seems to create very good playable file on my Bold unit.